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The Ballot Against the Bullet

By Kamila Shamsie May 6, 2013 6:55 amMay 6, 2013 6:55 am

KARACHI, Pakistan — At the start of last week I was in the nation’s capital, Islamabad, which adjoins the country’s most populous and most powerful province, Punjab. Almost all the political talk there was about Punjab, the home province of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, where he and his Pakistan Muslim League-N (P.M.L.-N) have been holding rallies, urging supporters to vote them into power. Most analysts believe that is exactly what will happen, even though Sharif won’t have the easy ride that he might once have expected: The cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (P.T.I.) party have strong support in Punjab, and Khan has been traveling the length and breadth of the province to prove the pundits wrong. This is as it should be in a democracy the week before an election.

But now I’m back in my hometown of Karachi, the capital of Sindh province, and here — as in all the provinces other than Punjab — the picture is very different. On the morning of May 3, the day after I arrived, the daily newspaper Dawn reported that since April 11 — exactly one month before Election Day — there had been 42 attacks on campaigners and campaign offices, with 70 people killed and more than 350 injured. Two candidates standing for elections were among the fatalities.

Within hours the report was tragically out of date. That same afternoon Sadiq Zaman Khattak, a candidate from the Awami National Party (A.N.P.), was shot and killed by gunmen, along with his young son, in Karachi. The following day twin blasts in a local park where the secular Muttahida Qaumi Movement (M.Q.M.) had set up an election office killed three people and injured 40. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, commonly known as the Pakistani Taliban, was quick to claim responsibility for both attacks. This was no great surprise: in December and then again in April the group had announced that it would target the country’s three major secular parties: the A.N.P., the M.Q.M. and the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (P.P.P.).

Since then, attacks on all three parties have been so sustained, and so crippling to their campaigning efforts, that these bitter, often bloody, rivals took the unprecedented step last Wednesday of issuing a joint press statement condemning the violence and vowing to be undeterred. They also pointed out that in Punjab “pro-Taliban parties” are continuing to campaign freely. The object of the attacks against them, they argued, was to force them out of the running and allow pro-Taliban forces to take over the government.

Photo

Pakistani security officials guarded the offices of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, in Karachi, following bomb blasts that killed three and wounded 40 on May 4.Credit Asif Hassan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The parties that stand accused of being pro-Taliban — the P.M.L.-N and P.T.I., as well as religious parties — have continued to campaign as if none of this is happening. While the violence has prevented the A.N.P., M.Q.M. and P.P.P. from holding large rallies and relegated media coverage of them to squibs describing bombs and gunmen, the P.M.L.-N and P.T.I. are holding major gatherings, which are broadcast live on TV and make headline news.

The kindest explanation for those parties’ detachment is that although they’re distressed by what’s happening, they don’t wish to find themselves and their workers in the firing line. But cowardice in the face of terrorism shouldn’t inspire much confidence in them. And a less kind explanation calls them “appeasers,” Taliban “sympathizers” and “cold-blooded opportunists.”

The Taliban themselves appear to be of two minds about the election. On the one hand, they seem to be targeting only those parties they view as enemies. On the other hand, they have been distributing — mostly in A.N.P., M.Q.M. and P.P.P. strongholds — pamphlets that say democracy itself is an infidel system and that anyone who participates in it is acting against Islam.

And so in parts of the country where the threat of more attacks on Election Day is high, no matter whom people vote for, simply by going to the polling stations they will be casting their ballots against the Pakistani Taliban.